By Kathleen V Salisbury
Director, Ambler Arboretum of Temple University
All images courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted
On September 1, 2021, the 187-acre Ambler Arboretum was directly and catastrophically struck by a confirmed EF2 tornado. More than five hundred trees in the cultivated spaces and hundreds more in the natural areas were destroyed causing a significant loss to the horticulture displays and botanical collections, impacting ongoing research and the courses using the Arboretum for their studies. The Ambler Campus of Temple University is a suburban regional campus of the R1 institution located in North Philadelphia. The entire campus is considered the Ambler Arboretum, which is Temple University’s botanical garden, outdoor classroom and living laboratory.
I have to admit that I am okay if I never hear the phrases “silver linings” or “making lemonade from lemons” ever again in my life. It is true that through this disaster we have learned some lessons and have been able to reimagine spaces and functions of the Arboretum. While this event was catastrophic and devastating, we were certainly not the first botanical garden to be destroyed by a natural disaster caused by human induced climate change—and as we learned earlier this year, when we learned of the wildfires that destroyed most of Chile’s National Botanical Garden we will not be the last. This is not something that is changing or going to end soon; the biodiversity of our planet, the protection of global botanical genetics is all at risk. It is important that botanical gardens are protected, that we use what has happened to teach about the issues and impacts of our changing climate and raise awareness of the role and value of public botanical gardens around the world.
What is now the Temple Ambler Campus and the Ambler Arboretum began back in 1911 as the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. This school was modeled on similar schools in Europe of the time, founded by women for women with the express goal to offer a place where women could learn a vocation other than teacher or secretary, which were the only two professions considered appropriate for women at the time. This was during a time when access to a degree-granting institution in landscape architecture or horticulture was very limited. Founded on the principle of combining what you learn in the classroom with hands-on practical experience, students learned by doing. These gardens were never stagnant. They were never a museum to what was or symbol of acclaim for particular designers or landscape architects. They were an outdoor classroom and a living laboratory, where students could practice the latest techniques, edit gardens based on the newest trends, learn about the research informing the new best management practices and put the newest technology to work.
In 1958 the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women became a part of Temple University. The campus remained a place of hands-on horticultural education, though many more majors and programs now made use of this verdant campus. The gardens remained the backdrop, the canvas for the Ambler campus. The Arboretum provided a green, calming safe space for many campus activities from student life events, to celebrations, to hosting classes in the gardens and was used as an outdoor classroom space in every season.
In just 6 minutes, this all changed.
Late that September afternoon, an EF2 Tornado spawned by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, touched down directly in Upper Dublin Township and the Ambler Campus.
The path of the tornado that hit the Arboretum was 8 miles long and 400 yards wide and lasted 14 minutes. According to the weather stations we have deployed around campus, six of those minutes was on the Ambler campus. I arrived on campus before sunrise the morning after the tornado and couldn’t believe what I found. I wasn’t sure where I was, and wherever I was, landscape and buildings were destroyed. The trees and 50 light poles lay like pick-up-sticks across every pathway and blocked access to most of the campus.
Astoundingly, the University sent up a drone photographer the day before to capture images of the campus; they do this somewhat regularly for mapping and promotional purposes. They came back the day after the storm and flew the drone again. The imagery they would capture with the before and after would be invaluable for the process of working with the insurance company and FEMA.
Well-established and historic spaces, popular teaching areas, and spots people have deep connections to were simply gone. 500 missing trees eventually took the form of mountains of logs and woodchips. Trees that were research subjects and teaching tools seemed like they could no longer be those things. Trees that helped to introduce the next generations of horticulture professionals to the wonder of our field, could no longer do that.
Or could they? After the initial shock of what happened, I thought of an old photo from the PSHW. This photo was published in an 1911 article featuring the students learning how to use dynamite to remove stumps and break up compacted soil. They set the dynamite in holes they dug, they set the fuses and ran the wire. They detonated the explosives.
Here these women were fearlessly using the latest technology of the time, to learn a skill, hands-on in the gardens. While we were not working with dynamite, it sure looked like an explosion happened here on campus. We had logs, we had stumps, we had trees damaged nearly beyond recognition. But when we started taking a look around, we realized there were lots of stories in those stumps and lessons in those logs.
We now had a modern challenge to bring to light and center our teaching and learning around. We had a real-world, local example of what anthropogenic climate change is doing to our environment.
Nature had formed for us demonstration areas showing what happens to groundwater if you lose the trees. We were able to demonstrate by just standing on campus during and after a rain, how much work those trees did to keep storm water out of creeks and streams. With all our trees gone, our stormwater management tools were working overtime, but they were working. These are some great lessons to be able to teach our students and the community. As you may imagine, some of those in the community who still had big trees left wanted to cut them down out of fear. While I certainly understand the reasoning, we are also able to show how having these trees here, helps with the more common problems we experience in this area of severe and frequent flooding.
The entire campus is also the Temple Ambler Field Station which hosts field research courses as well as faculty researchers from universities from around the region in the Temple Forest Observatory, and it is the location of the new Field Research in Community Ecology, Disturbance Ecology, and Ecology of Invasive Species courses, as well as the host site for a number of research projects. In partnership with the Smithsonian Institution Forest Global Earth Observatory students and faculty are collecting data in this space to compare with the same data collected in forests around the globe. The faculty and staff are currently working to investigate the impacts of the storm on biodiversity and ecosystem services of that forest; the space is now used as a place where students have the opportunity to think critically about climate-driven disturbances and have an opportunity to inform the future of many fields including our own as land managers. This provides students opportunities that will prepare them for tackling climate change.
In the Arboretum, we continue to teach hands-on in the field. From tree planting, to equipment types and operation, to maintenance, staff, students, and volunteers are all working and learning together.
As the woody plants instructor, I have been able to make some strategic decisions about planting through the lens of teaching and learning. Take for example the new “Green Screen.” Before it was a large hedge of mature conifers, mostly white pine and Norway spruces. Today it is planted with teaching and learning in mind. Many conifers are represented here for comparison. Students, or curious visitors, can easily compare and contrast different types of trees, easily seeing how a pine is different from a spruce or a dawn redwood from a bald cypress with them right next to each other. We have created spaces like this for maples, oaks, hickories, and horse chestnuts and buckeyes as well. In fact, to date we have planted 691 trees in the Arboretum, most of them balled and burlapped and averaging 3-4” caliper. The arboretum collection is now up to a total of 870 hardy woody taxa.
We are reimagining spaces with the predicted changing climate in mind. The revived sustainable wetland garden will still have a mission of capturing stormwater but will also demonstrate an artful approach to stormwater management. Our new climate resilient garden will feature a landscape of the future where the predicted change in our climate, as well as current conditions, are factored into the plant selection and offered as a model for home gardeners and our students alike.
That is just a small bit about what we have been up to since the storm. As I have gone through this process of dealing with the remnants of the tornado I have had a 100 percent turnover in the staff that was here at the time of the storm. New staff has come in and we have been working together to rebuild, reimagine, and replant the Arboretum with future generations in mind. As we have been doing this we have learned a lot of lessons, some of which I think may be useful should you ever have to deal with something of this nature.
It is going to be a long time before we know the full extent of the damage
More than 500 trees were lost at the time of the storm. But many more were damaged. Some were not damaged but were now in full sun where once they had been in protected shaded areas. Some survivor trees had their roots trampled by the large equipment that needed to come in to remove the fallen trees and repair roofs. We left many damaged trees standing, out of curiosity (one of the advantages of working for a research institution). We wondered: How would they grow back? How long would they survive post-storm in their altered state? What type of ecosystem services would they continue to provide? We are continuing to investigate the answers to these questions. We are seeing some trees now nearly 3 years later, struggling in their new environment, or with their compacted soils. We have started treating some of the large survivor trees in hopes we can keep as many as possible. Some of the stress from the storm is only showing up now, in times of drought and excess rains.
Celebrate the small wins
It took 9 months before I didn’t pull into my parking space at work and start crying. But there were times when we celebrated. Nearly immediately black locusts started sprouting from leafless, branchless logs. Seeds starting germinating in the newly sun filled floor of the Woodland Garden. Young trees that had languished in the deep shade of mature canopy trees shot up with so much room to grow and so much sunlight to themselves. We counted these as wins. We didn’t have to water them, or worry about them. They were thriving and growing into what would become our new canopy.
You may have no idea how people are connected to the space
In my experience here, some of the people wanting to get in were curious to see what happened and what was going on. Many of the people were coming in to check on their very favorite tree, or the tree their mother was engaged under, or the tree planted in memory of a lost son. We could not let them in to check these things, but I learned a lot of the stories of the campus over the weeks and months. People get attached to plants. And so whether it is in a public garden space and a college campus like this, or someone’s backyard, there is a good chance that there are stories associated with these plants. It is important to listen and learn about them, to ask questions and allow people time and space to share these stories.
People will want to help, people will help
People will want to help, they will come out of the woodwork offering to help and offering to donate things you may need. It is okay not to say yes to everything or not to say yes when it is offered. It is okay to say, “I am still processing this. May I get back to you when I have a better use of what I need and what my priorities are?” It is okay if you do that and, in my experience, people are still there to help you with what you need. Have a plan in place ahead of time to determine who you allow to help, how and when and who will communicate with them. In our case, initially only essential personnel were allowed onsite. Eventually we welcomed volunteers from the public garden world and our long-time volunteers back to help with the cleanup. It would be months before we welcomed new volunteers to the site.
Your perspective may shift
Prior to the tornado I had been contemplating how to manage a couple of large invasive trees in our collection. Do we cut them down? Do they stay and we just do not replace them when they die? Do we do something else? After the storm, these were two of our largest trees remaining in an area. While I still contemplated what to do with them, additional factors now resonated in the decision and I found myself wanting to save invasive trees.
Maintain good communication and relationships with your contractors and consultants
This probably goes without saying and is common sense, but I don’t know what I would have done without my arborists. I was able to call them immediately and they were able to mobilize a crew that was there first thing in the morning, not only to help clean up but to help triage the situation. They also helped with decisions regarding trees that were still standing. If I did not have a great relationship with that arborist, uninformed, hasty, or reactionary decisions could have been made that would have effects for years to come. The staff of this company cared as much about these trees as we did and understood our mission thoroughly, so they understood when the conversation did not revolve around just getting everything cleaned up and cleared out but instead revolved around what can be saved, how and why.
Know your insurance policy inside and out; know the FEMA regulations that apply to you. Use the technology you have to document everything;
If you cannot imagine a scenario in which you would need this documentation, document it anyway. The amount of proof we needed to provide to demonstrate the loss of our plant collection was monumental. Luckily and astoundingly, the university had decided to fly a drone over the campus to take photos just the day before the storm. We were able to use this, as well as our plant records and archival photographs to provide much of the information that was needed. We also had to do some forensic tree identification and aging. But there was a lot that we wish we had taken pictures of that we just did not think of in the moment. Just one example in our case: FEMA would reimburse for filling in the holes from where trees were tipped over. But they would only do that if more than 50% of the stump was out of the ground. It is difficult to prove that after the fact, once the stump was removed or ground down. Before any tree work or work begins to restore the property it is essential to photograph everything. This is a difficult decision to make because the instinct is to immediately start to fix everything and get it back to normal. But taking the first day just to document will save days and days of work in the future.
Reach out to experts, try not to get further underwater
There is only so much a person or a team of people can do in the midst of trying to deal with a disaster. In this case, we did not have the time or expertise to forensically age the trees we lost, which we had to do for insurance reasons. We reached out to an organization that offered that type of consulting for a fee, which would be covered by insurance. It is good to know who offers what types of consulting and services in your area and in your field that may be able to assist when a natural disaster strikes.
Now is the time to plant for a changing climate
Yes, we all know that planting for a changing climate should have been done decades ago. And not to say we haven’t been thinking of the climate as we have been adding new plants and gardens to the Arboretum’s displays. But as we now have a fairly clean slate, and a garden that shows what the physical ramifications of our changing climate can be, we have an opportunity to highlight what plants will thrive in and how they can help mitigate this challenge.
You do not need to remove all evidence of the disaster
As I mentioned earlier, we kept many of the damaged trees standing and have been using them for lessons. It is easier to teach about climate change, and to start conversations around what is happening and what people can do to help when they ask why our trees look so funny. If we had cleaned everything up, we would not have an opportunity to share these stories and the questions may never have been asked. Additionally, we are surprised each year with the resilience of the “Survivor Trees.” These trees flower and fruit, provide nesting spots, hold carbon, prevent erosion and slow water far better than a newly planted tree will for decades. Sure they look ridiculous and in some situations this would not be appropriate, but perhaps we consider our reactions to damage from natural disasters and instead of cleaning up until there is no sign of what happened, we embrace the lessons and the scars and use them to help change the future?
We have made lemonade out of lemons, and we have found silver linings. But when people mention that maybe the tornado was a benefit, I do hesitate. While no one was harmed on this campus, a person in our community died as a result of this storm and many more lost their vehicles and their homes. So no, I can’t say I am glad this happened. The ecosystem services alone that we lost because of the death of more than 500 mostly mature trees would cause me to say this. But, it did happen and more than 110 years later, this land that is now the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University continues to carry on the spirit of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. We are using the most current research and science to make decisions about the gardens and collections which will live on as living laboratories and outdoor classrooms for the next 100 years of students to come.